Sleepers Wake
by Elisabeth Hill
Summary: Folklore and history student Kate Marsh expected to spend her trip to England poking around burial mounds and museums. She did not expect to wind up embroiled in a centuries-old war of imagination and belief, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. That's what you get for traveling abroad. Contains OCs and abuse of archaeology. You have been warned.
1. Chapter 1

It was a chilly morning, and a fine silver mist had settled over the landscape, giving the vibrant green of the hills a ghostly cast. The grey skies overhead forecast a wet and miserable day to come. Kate, sipping her mug of Lady Grey as she gazed out the window of the dining room, couldn't be more pleased.

"It's hardly the best weather to view the White Horse, but at least it won't be forty degrees in the sun and I won't get a horrific burn." She smiled to herself, putting the mug down on its coaster with a noise that seemed far too loud for the hour of the morning. Picking up her pen, she scribbled down a few notes about the weather into the travel journal she'd sworn she'd keep on this expedition, and then closed the leather-bound book with a satisfying snap. Time to face the day, then.

She'd really come to poke around Anglo-Saxon burial mounds, but she couldn't resist the opportunity to view the White Horse in person. She wouldn't get a very good look at it, since she wasn't going to be renting a helicopter to take her up and look from the air – she had limited enough funds as it was, and she'd pretty much spent what she could afford for this leg of the trip on a night at this bed and breakfast. "It would be nice if there were hostels in Uffington," she grumbled quietly to herself, putting her napkin across the plate, "but nooo." Taking her notebook and the accompanying pen, she beat a retreat upstairs to pack.

An hour later, the sun had started to burn off some of the mist and Kate was making her way along the Ridgeway. The bicycle she'd rented had a tendency to veer to the left, and she'd tried everything short of taking it to bits and putting it back together again, to no avail. She was starting to suspect it wasn't so much a mechanical defect as it was simply an aspect of the bicycle's character. Combined with the pack on her back, which held everything she'd thought she might possibly need for a two-week backpacking trip around the UK, and the bumpy road, what might have been a minor inconvenience was turning quickly into a source of serious frustration. After she hit the third rock and nearly pitched headlong over the handlebars, she decided that it might be time to take the cycle to a repair shop. Or maybe back to the rental company.

By the time she pulled into the car park at White Horse Hill, the mist was all but gone, the sun bravely lancing through the cloud cover, and Kate was feeling ready to sit down for the entire remainder of her trip. After looking in vain for a bench, she finally flopped gratefully down on the ground in the shade of one of the rare patches of trees. Why had she decided that a backpacking tour was the best idea, again? She probably could have used the grant money to travel in style, or at least in comfort.

She paused to think about it as she dug out her water bottle from the overstuffed backpack. But if she'd used the grant money for that, then there was no way she would have been able to get guides and time actually interacting with the burial mounds she'd come to study. She'd have had to look at the artifacts and the sites from behind glass cases and velvet ropes, just like any other tourist. What good would that do her research? And besides, cycling halfway across Europe was so much better of an experience than busing it would be. She could practically taste the local flavour in the air.

On second thought, maybe that wasn't local flavour. She had, after all, just cycled nearly two miles. "My kingdom for a shower," Kate groaned, and uncapped the bottle of water. She took a long drink, and made a face. Lukewarm water from a steel bottle was not a pleasant taste. "Ugh. If this was at least _cold -_"

The sentence ended in a yelp. Kate dropped the water bottle, blowing frantically on her fingers to try to bring some feeling back into them. Luckily, it didn't look like any of her water had spilled. Upon closer investigation, she discovered that this was because it was all frozen into a solid lump of ice. The outside of the bottle was covered in a delicate lace of frost, except for the places where her fingers had touched.

Kate sat very still, staring.

The wind picked up out of nowhere, blowing a few strands of her hair into her mouth and rustling the branches of the trees behind her. And even though it was probably just another tourist yelling at a friend somewhere farther up the hill, she _knew_ she heard a faint "you're welcome!" from somewhere in the distance behind her.

* * *

AN: For the curious, this is based entirely off of movie canon. If anything in this story diverts from book canon (which it will, inevitably, do), then please regard it as a movie-based AU.

I am going to take excessive liberties with archaeology and the historical record. I am doing a modicum of research, but I will probably..._reinterpret_ the facts if it suits the story better.

For everything else, I offer my sincerest apologies.


	2. Chapter 2

"After last night's unseasonal frosts, our local forecast today is for lots and lots of sun! So get out there and enjoy the good weather while it lasts."

Kate snorted, turning down the sound on the radio. The meteorologist continued to prattle on, outlining the week's forecast, unheeded, as Kate struggled into a pair of pants, finally falling over on the bed with a loud _floomph_. She rolled over, and stared out the window at the broiling storm clouds circling over the Hill. "Did nobody at the radio station think to, I don't know, look out a window?"

She wasn't really complaining, although if it decided to thunder and lightning it might put her tour of the burial mounds in serious jeopardy. There wasn't exactly a lot of cover out on the Hill, and a lot of open, flat ground. Cool weather wasn't going to scare her off, though. Living in a country that regularly hit forty below made a girl a little tougher than that. She'd just dress in layers.

She really hoped it _wouldn't_ thunder. She'd spent most of yesterday exploring the castle, which was really more of an earthworks in itself, and trying to get a good look at the horse. If she didn't get to go poke some ancient artifacts today, then she wouldn't get to at all. She had to be moving on tomorrow, or she'd muck up her entire itinerary, and then she wouldn't get a chance to look at the Trumpington burial. And she was almost as excited about getting up close and personal with the Trumpington burial as she was about visiting Wayland's Smithy later today (of course, that was only if everything went according to plan, which Kate was acutely aware hardly ever happened while traveling). And she was _very_ excited about visiting Wayland's Smithy.

Suddenly reminded that she had to pack up and put her room in order, Kate looked around, took stock of the disaster area she'd somehow managed to create in just two nights, sighed, and set about fishing out each and every last embarrassing personal item from their hiding places.

…

"Well, you made it after all!"

Kate smiled her biggest, wiping her hand off on her pants leg before offering it to the smiling older gentleman to shake. The long bike rides didn't exactly leave a girl as fresh as a daisy. "I did indeed. Takes more than a few storm clouds to scare off a Canadian. You're Dr. Lock?"

"I should hope so!" The gentleman grabbed Kate's hand and shook it, far more vigourously than she'd expected. "And you'll be that Miss Marsh we've all heard so much about." He tugged on her arm, pulling her in closer, bringing her almost nose-to-nose with him. The professor was only about an inch taller than Kate, and not too much thicker around (except right around the middle), but for some reason, Kate felt very certain that if he didn't want her to get away, she wouldn't. He scrutinized her for a moment, during which Kate began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and then made a satisfied noise and released his iron grip on her hand. Kate quickly took a step back, grinning nervously and wishing she could curl up and disappear into thin air.

"Only good things, I hope?" she tried to joke, and the professor laughed heartily, his sandy-coloured whiskers flapping.

"Only the best, my dear girl! You don't think we let just _anyone_ go nosing around our collection of priceless artifacts, do you?"

Kate didn't answer, just glanced up the hill at the group of ribbon-bedecked pagans who were alternately chanting something and looking apprehensively at the grumbling sky. The professor followed her line of sight, and sighed. "Well, the tourists pay well. And they mean well. I'd far rather have a few people dancing in circles than an ancient god deciding to rain down fire and wrath on all our heads, wouldn't you?"

"We might get both," Kate answered, glancing up at the sky, and the professor laughed again, thankfully a little less boisterously this time.

"I hope not. We're going right into the valley. I hope you brought an umbrella."

Kate patted the overstuffed pack on her back with a smile. "Way ahead of you."

…

The rain held off until about one o'clock in the afternoon, at which point the clouds opened up and unleashed a flood of almost Biblical proportions. Kate stayed out as long as she could, but when the earthworks threatened to turn to mudworks she finally had to give up the ghost.

"Shall we head back to the museum?" the professor asked. "You can ride along with me; you needn't ride that dreadful contraption in this downpour."

Kate was about to agree when her gaze fell on the hill. The pagans had gone, hopefully before the storm caught them – they hadn't looked terribly well-prepared for the wet. But there was someone still standing on the hill. Several someones, in fact.

"Miss Marsh?"

"Just a second." Kate squinted, but she couldn't quite make out through the pelting rain if there were two or three figures up at the top of the hill. She wasn't sure what good she could actually do, and probably the people on the hill knew what they were doing, but some misguided sense of civic duty felt that it wouldn't be right to drive off and leave anyone alone in what was probably about to become a full-blown thunderstorm. "Should we offer those guys a ride?"

The professor gave her an odd, scrutinizing look. "The nature-worshippers left almost an hour ago."

"No, not them, I know they left, I meant -" The professor's expression was a combination of befuddlement and exasperation. "They're up by the horse?" she tried, and the professor shook his head.

"The rain and your eyes must be playing tricks on you. Come along, let's get out of this deluge." He reached out and took her arm, tugging her gently but insistently away from the mound.

"But -" Kate started, looking over her shoulder.

The hill was empty and dark against the grey sky.

Shrugging, Kate let herself be led along by the professor. Maybe they'd parked on the other side of the hill, or just gone down there to take shelter. Or some other completely logical explanation that didn't involve disappearing. She let herself be drawn into the conversation about what artifacts she wanted a closer look at, which somehow turned into a discussion of the Sutton Hoo burial, and as they pulled out of the car park she'd almost completely forgotten about the people on the hill.

That is, until she happened to look out the window straight into the eye of a huge white horse.

Kate didn't scream. She may have made a tiny strangled noise in the back of her throat, but she didn't scream. And she didn't scream as the horse tossed its head and sped up, quickly overtaking the professor's station wagon and then _climbing straight up into the air_. It galloped along in front of them for a few seconds, and then veered to the right and took off across the fields, until it was lost in the rain.

The professor finished his ramble about weregild and turned to look at Kate. "But I'm always interested in hearing another scholar's opinion! What say you, Miss Marsh?"

The only thing that Kate could muster was a small 'gnarfle'.


	3. Chapter 3

Either she had suffered some sort of psychotic break, or something seriously strange was going on. The museum visit should have been one of the highlights of her visit to Uffington, but as it was, Kate only sleepwalked through her tour, and when the professor offered to show her the artifacts they had in storage, her "yes, please" was lackluster. She knew she'd probably missed several things that could have been key clues to an understanding of Anglo-Saxon England, and she was still kicking herself for it, but she simply couldn't bring herself to concentrate properly with the day's strangeness preying on her mind.

Thankfully, the downpour had been brief, and so she'd managed to set off at the time she'd planned. Hopefully she'd be in Oxford by dark. But first, she wanted to stop by Wayland's Smithy.

The road was a little difficult to find; she'd been advised by a website that she could get there via "a road branching off the B4507" but finding out _which_ road had been a labour of both love and Internet. She wound up running into three dead ends and then, when she thought she'd found the right one, ended up going several miles out of her way before she finally realized she was going in the wrong direction. By the time she pulled up outside the tomb, the sun was starting to get fat and red and low in the sky.

Someone was already there, she noticed, catching a few snippets of conversation as she walked towards the mouth of the barrow. Well, that was normal. It was a tourist attraction, after all, if a somewhat hidden one.

She stopped dead, though, behind one of the tall, upright stones by the entrance of the barrow, when she recognized one of the voices. She didn't know who it belonged to, but she'd last heard it calling a friendly and joking "you're welcome!" from somewhere up on the Hill.

"What do you mean, you can't do it? You're the only one who could put shoes on that horse -"

"And I won't do it." The second voice was deep, gruff, and conjured a mental image of a burly man in furs and a helmet with horns on, possibly wielding an axe.

"So now you _won't_ do it. Which is it, can't or won't?"

There was a hiss that put Kate in mind of a kettle just on the point of boiling, and a clang that made her jump. "Can't _and_ won't!"

"Oh, come on." The first voice sounded more irritated than disappointed (or startled, which was what Kate was feeling). "You've made lots of stuff for the Guardians before – Tooth wouldn't stop crowing about her sorting machine when North mentioned you -"

"That _is_ some of my finest work," the second voice interjected proudly.

"Exactly! So what's so different about this? It's not even a special commission, just the same thing you've been doing for centuries."

"But no one has ever asked me to shoe the very spirit of horses itself! Have you any idea what -" The voice stopped abruptly as Kate, no longer able to contain her curiosity, stepped out around the standing stone.

There were not, as she'd thought, only two people there. Then again, she wasn't sure 'people' was the best word. It was certainly broad enough to encompass the large man in the leather apron, with the goggles and what looked like a steampunk flamethrower strapped to his back, and the silver-haired, barefoot boy who for reasons she couldn't quite explain reminded Kate of Peter Pan. It probably included the small, round gentleman who looked like he'd been tapped by a girls' ballet company to play the sun, and had hair that would make Einstein proud. But she was quite sure that, even in the lukewarm English summer, most people wouldn't have frost glittering on their shoulders. And no matter _what_ the weather, most people didn't bob along a few inches from the ground on a cloud of golden sparkles.

There was a moment of frozen silence. Then the large man glanced from Kate to the boy. "Is it just me, or does she see us?"

"Uh," Kate managed, intelligently. And that was all she managed, before the small floating man shook his head and tossed something shimmering at her. For a second, the world was golden and sparkling, then her legs turned to water and the last thing she knew was cold hands catching her before she was –

_flying, soaring over the landscape without visible means of suspension or propulsion, the downs scrolling away beneath her and the wind whipping her dark hair around her face as she sped towards the Hill. The nearer she came, the better she could see the White Horse, champing at the hillside that fettered it until at last with a snort like thunder it shook off the heavy earth and mounted up into the air, and she was sure this had all happened before, she only needed to remember – _

"Miss Marsh?"

"Aah!" Kate sat bolt upright, for a moment not knowing where she was or even who she was, before she recognized the standing stones at the mouth of the barrow. She was still at Wayland's Smithy, lying against the stones of the entrance, and judging by the light and the soreness in her back, she'd been there for a while. "I – Dr. Lock? How did you know I was out here?"

"I didn't." The professor's forehead wrinkled under his floppy hat. "Our conversation yesterday made me realize I hadn't been by the smithy in far too long, so I decided to pay old Wayland a visit, and here you were." He reached out to offer her a hand up, which Kate gratefully took, her legs protesting at being so ill-treated as she scrambled to her feet. "You must have been exhausted by all that cycling, to fall asleep here on Wayland's doorstep. I suppose you're lucky you hadn't any sixpence on you, or he might have tried to shoe you!" The professor's tone was light, but the look he gave her was anything but merry.

Kate didn't really notice. She was busily staring down into the mouth of the barrow. "I think I saw him," she said, slowly, and the professor laughed.

"Who? Wayland Smith? My dear girl, you must have been dreaming!" This time, even Kate didn't miss the worry in his jovial grin. "The whole point of the thing is that no one sees Wayland. He's an invisible spirit. Who shoes horses without being seen. Invisibly, as it were."

"I know." She shook her head, trying to clear out the last of the cobwebs. "I think I had some very strange dreams."

"Well, that's only to be expected, when you sleep so near to history."

"Mmhmm." Kate stretched, hearing more than feeling her shoulders pop. It hadn't all been a dream, though. She was sure. It couldn't have _all _been a dream…

…could it?

"What time is it?" she asked, in part to distract herself from wondering what was actually going on.

The professor glanced down at the large gold watch on his left wrist. "About five minutes past twelve."

"_What_!" Suddenly, invisible smiths who weren't so invisible were the last thing on Kate's mind. "Oh noooo! I was supposed to have left Oxford three hours ago! I'm not going to make it into Cambridge in time for my appointment, and they're not going to let me look at the site, and -"

"Slow down!" The professor laughed. "It would be a crying shame for you to miss your chance to study the Trumpington site just because you were engaged with another piece of our Anglo-Saxon heritage. Let me drive you."

"What? Oh no, I couldn't possibly – I mean, you've done so much for me already -"

The professor tutted loudly. "Now, I won't hear a word of protest. You've no other way to get to where you need to be by the time you need to be there, and the museum has more than enough staff. They can manage without their curator for one afternoon! Besides," he twinkled, "it's not every day that I get to discuss the finer points of sixth-century hoards with such a charming young lady."

Kate, despite herself, blushed. "Well, thank you very much!"

"Don't mention it, my dear." The professor made a slight bow, and Kate smothered a giggle. "Now where's that infernal contraption of yours?"

…

It might have been the clouds that began to gather as the afternoon wore on, but the rest of the trip seemed almost to have a pall cast over it, a shadow between them and the sun. They weren't even proper clouds, really, just a faint haze that thickened into a dull grey layer covering the sky. By the time they arrived in Cambridge, the sun was nothing more than a faint spot, a washed-out watercolour sun behind the uniform grey.

The professor dropped Kate off with bicycle and backpack in front of the Lord Byron Inn, with an admonishment to call the museum if she should need anything. "I'm there most of the time, and if I'm not…" He paused. "Then I'm most probably back in the archives."

"What, do you live at that museum or something?" Kate joked. The professor laughed, which quickly turned into a cough. "Maybe it is a good thing that you had to drive me here, if it gets you out into the fresh air!"

"Yes. Well. I expect you to tell me all about your visit to the mound!" The professor turned to get back into the car, and then paused. "Oh, and do try and make sure you see the eclipse. It's coming this week sometime, I believe."

"An eclipse?"

"Well, it's only a lunar eclipse. But that's still fairly impressive, and I do hope you won't miss it."

Kate laughed, and promised, and waved as the professor drove off, his little hatchback sputtering erratically off down the street. Then she turned, squared her shoulders, walked inside, and asked for her reservation.


	4. Chapter 4

The Trumpington site was open, in the middle of a field, lined with trees along one end. Kate had been half-expecting mounds, but all there were were a few long blue tarps tacked down to the ground, rectangular and about as long as a person. Kate guessed, correctly, that these were covering the excavations. The ground all around was bare, stripped of whatever life had been there before the archaeologists had started in on it, although it seemed to Kate that there hadn't been much life there to begin with. The whole place seemed as barren as the top of Uffington's Dragon Hill, with only a few stunted, twisted specimens of flora clinging tooth and nail to the weathered, bare brown earth.

"Charming place you've got here," Kate muttered. The wind whipped the words out of her mouth and away before the curator could hear them, but he fixed her with a suspicious glare nonetheless.

"The main burial is in the middle, there," the curator half-said, half-sighed, pointing listlessly. "I don't suppose you'll be wanting a proper tour."

Kate debated internally for a few seconds. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a basic overview of the site from its curator. On the other hand, thought, she had read up on the site. She wasn't completely clueless. And the curator was so thoroughly unpleasant that Kate didn't really want to spend any longer than she absolutely had to in his company.

So she put on a bright, fake smile which trotted happily into the soggy disapproval of the curator's glare and became thoroughly dampened. "No. I think I'm capable of finding my own way around, thank you."

The curator sniffed. Evidently, this had been the wrong answer. "If you're sure -"

"Yes. Yes I am," Kate repeated quickly.

The curator sniffed again. Kate resisted the urge to ask if he needed a handkerchief. "Then I suggest you begin with either of the excavations on the outside. The girl in the bed has been studied positively to a second death. I doubt you'll find anything the archaeologists didn't." His expression said very clearly that he didn't just doubt that Kate would find anything new, but that he was practically certain of it.

"Thank you," Kate said, through gritted teeth. And then, regardless of how rude it might be, she turned her back to the curator and started across the site to the middle excavation. Maybe she wouldn't see anything she hadn't read about, but it didn't really matter. She'd paid thousands of dollars and flown halfway across the world to see this burial, and she wasn't leaving without getting up close and personal with the main attraction. Nothing was going to spoil this for her.

The rapidly-darkening sky, however, did put a damper on the mood somewhat.

The curator looked up, muttered something about Canadians and thick skulls, and called out to Kate, "I'm going to get the boys to put the tent up. Don't touch anything until I get back." He turned and began to shuffle back towards the building, muttering all the while.

Kate said a silent thanks to the gathering stormclouds for getting him out of her hair, even if it was only for a few minutes. Looking over her shoulder to make sure the curator wasn't watching, she untied the tarp, folded it back, and slipped down into the hole.

The excavation was just slightly deeper than she was tall, which wasn't really saying much. The walls and floor were bare earth, and when Kate landed, her boots kicked up a cloud of dust and dirt that made her eyes sting. She blinked rapidly, hearing a low argument of thunder somewhere in the distance. The curator and his 'boys' had better hurry with that tent, or the imminent rain was going to wreak havoc on the skeleton lying half-buried in the dirt just inches from Kate's toes.

Kate knelt down, almost reverently. The skeleton before her was all that remained of a girl, not quite as old as Kate herself, who had lived and breathed and dreamed and died over a thousand years ago. The sense of time was staggering, almost overwhelming, and Kate realized she was holding her breath. In a bid to recover herself, she looked around for the metal fixtures that were part of what made this burial special. Some high-class Saxons of the era had been buried lying in a boat constructed especially for the purpose, a tradition they shared with the early Scandinavians. Most scholars agreed that this was due to the belief that the afterlife was reached by crossing water, and the boats were therefore a necessary conveyance for the dead person to reach the afterlife.

But there was no agreed-upon theory to explain why a handful of teenaged girls had been buried, instead, in beds.

Kate started at the left-hand corner, reaching down to touch the iron bracket that was the only remaining evidence of the girl's unusual method of burial. This wasn't the only burial of its type, of course, but it was the most recent, and it was one of only fifteen in Britain. When you added to that the fact that the girl had been found wearing an elaborate gold and garnet cross, a rare artifact which the archaeologists believed had been sewn to her dress and marked her as high-class, this burial became practically unique.

At the last moment, she stopped, her fingers a bare centimeter from the tip of the bracket. She really shouldn't be touching anything without gloves. Straightening up, she slipped her backpack off, shivering as a cloud crossed the sun and plunged the site into shadow. Kate looked up, to see the sky completely covered by thick black clouds, the light draining quickly away until it was as dark as dusk. There was a faint, expectant charge to the air, and Kate caught the scent of rain mingled with the dirt. She hadn't thought it had been hot enough earlier in the day for a thunderstorm this early, but apparently they were getting one. Stupid English weather.

"Where is that tent?" Kate asked, quietly, mostly to hear herself speak. The temperature had dropped fast since the sun had vanished, and she'd broken out in goosebumps all along her uncovered arms. She started to unzip her backpack to look for a sweater, but stopped dead, standing still and as quiet as she could. Had she just imagined that noise? Was that the curator coming back with the tent? She tried to peer over the top of the pit, without much success. Was it just the wind making those strange rustlings and hissings? Was it the clouds overhead that were causing the shadows to shift?

No.

A brilliant streak of lightning lit up the whole world in stark black and white, before plunging it back into darkness. Kate frantically blinked away afterimages as thunder crackled overhead. By the time she got her vision back, everything was normal. The site was still empty and dark under the clouds.

Kate wasn't reassured. In fact, she was just the opposite. She knew she'd seen a silhouette across the pit from her, tall and black and featureless against the lightning-lit sky.

Someone had been in the pit with her. And now they were nowhere to be seen.

Kate swallowed, a simple action that was suddenly unwarrantedly difficult. Her mouth felt as dry as the dirt all around her, and she was sure her goosebumps weren't all from the cold anymore. Feeling uncomfortably like the first casualty in a horror movie, she called out, "Hello?"

She didn't get a reply.

Kate blew out a breath and brushed her bangs out of her face, wondering if perhaps she'd imagined it. She hefted her backpack back onto her shoulders, feeling slightly braver with both hands free. "I have bear spray, you know," she said, and was glad to hear that her voice barely shook at all. "And I'm not afraid -"

The rest of her sentence was drowned in a low, menacing laugh that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "To…use it," Kate finished weakly. That sound could be distant thunder, but she didn't think so. Where was the curator? She'd even rather put up with his clueless snobbishness than slowly lose it alone in the pit.

And suddenly, Kate felt like an idiot. Here she was, a grown woman, jumping at shadows like a scared little girl. She swallowed again, and squared her shoulders, trying to remember where she'd put her bear spray. "Look, I don't know what's going on, I don't know who's there or where you're hiding, but if you don't come out now -"

"Oh, please finish that threat."

Kate jumped, squeezing down a squeal. The voice was dark and rich and bitter, like black coffee, but that wasn't why she'd jumped. No, that was because it had spoken almost directly into her ear.

She whirled around, realizing too late that she was now standing in the skeleton's bed. But there was still no one there. Only the blank dirt wall, draped in slightly darker shadow, looked innocently back. Kate took a deep breath and a careful step forward, making certain she hadn't disturbed the bones. Her right foot had come down a hair's breadth from the Saxon girl's leg, and Kate breathed a sigh of relief.

Only for it to turn into a shriek when another flash of lightning revealed a face, white against the darker background of the wall, grinning out of the shadow before her. It vanished into little more than a faint glimmer of eyes and wicked smile as soon as the lightning flickered out, and even that was gone before Kate was really sure she'd seen it at all.

Kate stood frozen, heart hammering in her chest, as thunder growled its displeasure into the dark sky. "I would just love to see what you could do to me," the black-coffee voice continued from behind her, apparently unperturbed by her scream. This time, Kate didn't spin around, instead looking down to make sure she didn't step on anything fragile and immeasurably important to the historical record. She tried very hard to focus solely on the skeleton as she shuffled around, and not on the feeling that she'd just slipped into some kind of nightmare world where the laws of reality need not apply.

She was only marginally successful.

A single bolt of lightning struck somewhere behind Kate, finally giving her a good look at her tormentor. A little bit of panic ebbed away when she saw that, tall and imposing as he looked standing on the edge of the pit smirking down at her, all he really was was a shadowy man in a long, dark coat.

"Enough with the theatrics," Kate shouted, trying to make herself heard over the slow, rolling buildup of thunder. "Who are you? What do you want?" And, because she really wanted to know how he'd managed to appear out of seemingly nowhere and she'd never been one to rein in her curiosity when given an opportunity to satisfy it, "Where did you come from?"

The sky flickered on and off like a broken neon light as lightning danced from cloud to cloud. The man in the black coat began to walk, in slow, measured steps, around the edge of the pit towards her, and Kate swiveled to follow him. If only she didn't feel so horribly exposed with her back no longer against the wall…

"Where did I come from?" The man looked away from Kate, as though she bored him, up towards the grumbling, flickering skies. Kate, with a creeping sort of feeling, realized that the growling she could hear wasn't all thunder, and half-turned, quickly wishing she hadn't. Three hulking black shapes stood along the edge of the pit, watching her. They were like dogs but bigger, shaggier, rougher, with great humped shoulders and eyes that glowed ember-bright in dark faces and slavering mouths full of dagger-sharp teeth. They were like nothing so much as wolves straight out of a fairy tale, and, as Kate watched, two more joined them, taking up positions at the narrow ends of the pit and effectively cutting off her escape.

Kate took a wary step backwards, away from the beasts, and nearly screamed again when she bumped into someone. Cold, dry hands closed over her shoulders like a vise, and when she flinched away it was like pushing against iron bars. "Where did I come from?" the voice she now recognized as belonging to her tormentor repeated, sounding amused. Kate took a deep, steadying breath, and found that the air tasted, instead of dust and impending rain, of old basements and dark, forgotten places. In the back of her mind, she really hoped she wasn't standing on the skeleton.

Cool breath made the hairs along the back of her neck stand to attention as the voice whispered into her ear, "I came from under the bed."

He spun her around before she had time to think, and Kate found herself eye to eerily-golden eye with someone who could not possibly be human. The smile he gave her was smaller and slightly more genuine than the Cheshire-cat grin that had disappeared into the shadows, but it was somehow ten times more terrifying. "And this time, I won't be going back."


	5. Chapter 5

Lightning split the sky and thunder exploded overhead, rattling Kate's teeth. And something hit her like a train, whirling her inexorably out of the man's grasp and up out of the pit. She flew over the heads of the wolves and slammed into the hard ground, her left shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Wincing, she rolled, scrambling to her feet, as the wolves turned to face her. As she backed away, she looked down to see what had struck her.

It was a train. A small, golden coal-powered steam engine, only a little taller than the pit, its edges rounded like an oversized toy. It glittered brightly despite the fact that no light fell directly on it, and Kate got the strong impression that it was somehow glowing from within. She knew she'd never seen anything like it before, but somehow it seemed oddly familiar.

And then it began to float apart, dismantling into pieces, and revealed the train's engineer. Kate sucked in a breath as she recognized the small, round gentleman from the smithy, his wild hair bristling and an expression of furious seriousness on his round face that might have looked funny on anyone else of his stature.

It didn't look funny on him. Kate was suddenly very glad that she wasn't on the receiving end of his glare. And she was very glad indeed, as the train parts began to shed streamers of shimmering gold, that she wasn't the black-clad man standing, now, in front of him. The train pieces quickly became unrecognizable, whittled away into wickedly sharp points, which hovered in midair for the barest sliver of a second before the small, round gentleman waved an arm, as though throwing a baseball, and the points all shot forward.

Most of them hit the back wall of the pit and splattered, exploding into puffs of golden dust which quickly whirled and re-formed into streaming tendrils, swirling back towards the small golden gentleman.

A low growl and a yelp reminded Kate of her immediate predicament. One of the points had struck a wolf in the behind, and the creatures all drew away from the pit, momentarily focused on the action taking place below. Kate took a few cautious steps backwards, hoping that their attention would remain on the fight and off of her.

A few of the points nearly struck the tall man in black, who - there was no other word for it - danced out of the way, moving almost too fast for Kate to follow. "You've stooped low enough to steal my tricks, Sandman?"

Kate saw the small man's eyes flicker open with surprise, and then a flurry of glimmering strands unfurled from his sleeves and he snapped them downwards, like a whip. Kate didn't see what happened next, though. The wolves had remembered she was there.

A snarl from behind her made her spin, not wanting to have her back to any of the beasts. She quickly realized that she didn't have a choice - she had no idea where they could have come from, but four more wolves had appeared behind her, advancing on her in a line of solid black broken only by the occasional flash of tooth or eye or claw. She turned in a circle, looking for a chance to break away, but she was already encircled, trapped in the centre of a slowly-closing ring.

Kate pulled off her backpack, rotating on the spot so as not to present quite such an easy target as she unzipped pouch after pouch looking for her bear spray. She had a feeling that it wouldn't do much good against these monsters, but it was better than being unarmed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a glimmer of something large and golden-gleaming as it rose out of the pit, but with all her attention focused on keeping herself from being eaten, she didn't really have time to register it until she heard, from somewhere above her and to her left, the coffee-dark voice of the man in the black coat. "Where are the rest of the Guardians, anyway? This is hardly the welcome-back party I expected."

A change in the tone of the growls from behind her made Kate spin, swinging her backpack in front of her as she did. The heavy pack caught the leaping wolf square in the snout, knocking it away from her. It landed on its back with a whimper, and Kate whirled around, waving the backpack as menacingly as she could. "Anyone else want to try?" she shouted to the assembled ranks.

The sawtoothed edge that crept into their growling said quite clearly that yes, they did.

Another wolf leapt, apparently deciding that Kate wasn't threatening enough to wait to attack from behind. Kate swung her pack, knowing as soon as she did that it wasn't going to connect. The wolf was moving too fast, she was too slow, and she was too committed to the swing to change tactics now. She braced herself for the impact -

Which didn't come. There was a flash, and a crackling bolt of icy blue light slapped the wolf out of the air and into two other wolves, throwing them into yipping confusion. Kate's backpack swung through thin air, dragging her off balance, and she nearly fell headlong onto the ground before she caught herself. Regaining her footing, she darted forward before the ring could close again, running between the fallen wolves and dodging one who snapped at her heels as she ran. And then she was out, and the wolves were scrambling to regain their feet.

As she ran, Kate tried to remember whether it was wolves or horses that were slower than humans in a short sprint. She had an uncomfortable feeling that it was horses. There was no way she'd make it back to the building before they caught up with her, and the bare field didn't offer many options in the 'hiding' or 'climbing a tree' department. Which left her with two equally unsavoury options: keep running, or stand and fight. Given that her only weapon was her backpack, stand and fight was pretty much out.

That left her with running. She knew she shouldn't, it would only scare her more and slow her down, but Kate still glanced back over her shoulder to check how much of a head start she had.

The wolves hadn't followed her. They were otherwise occupied, menacing the silver-haired teenage boy who had landed in their midst. Kate stopped dead in her tracks. There wasn't really anything she could do, but she'd be damned before she'd let someone save her sorry behind at their own expense.

There didn't seem to be much she could do, though, and not just because she was unarmed and pretty much defenseless. The boy seemed to be more than holding his own, and Kate momentarily forgot that she was in immediate and rather serious danger, watching him lay into the wolves with the shepherd's crook he wielded now like a pike, now like a quarterstaff. It was almost more like watching a dance than a fight, and Kate was barely surprised to notice that the boy seemed to have a cavalier attitude towards gravity. At this point, she was fairly sure that nothing could surprise her anymore.

And, of course, she was wrong.

The boy glanced up from tripping a running wolf, forcing the unfortunate creature to attempt a somersault, and met Kate's eyes. "What are you doing? Get out of here!" And before Kate could say anything or make a move, he was airborne, hanging in midair to fire another bolt of crackling blue down at the wolves. A wall of shimmering spikes sprang up out of the ground between Kate and the wolves, and before Kate had time to really process it - was that ice? - there was wind nearly bowling her over backwards and the boy swooped down and scooped her up with the arm that wasn't holding his staff.

Kate was screaming before her feet even left the ground.

"Look out!"

The boy glanced over his shoulder, twisting in the air, and veered sharply upwards, pulling both himself and Kate out of the path of something dark and shimmering and giving Kate the distinct feeling that she'd left her stomach somewhere behind her. "More nightmares?" the boy muttered, and Kate got the impression that he was talking, not to her, but to himself. "There's no way he's strong enough yet…"

Trying not to think too hard about how high she was in the air, Kate twisted, looking for whatever had nearly hit them. She caught a glimpse of trails of darkly sparkling…sand?

"Stop wriggling," the boy warned her, "or I'm going to drop -"

He didn't get to finish the sentence. One of those tendrils of spiraling darkness wrapped itself around the boy's neck and yanked him backwards. He made a surprised noise, there was a moment of confusion, and suddenly Kate was hanging unsupported in midair over the fields. She stayed there for a few heart-stopping slivers of a second before gravity, which had apparently been asleep on the job, got its act together, and she plummeted like a stone.

The roar of the wind in her ears was loud enough to drown out both her own screams and the rumble of thunder on the horizon. Kate flailed about desperately for something, anything, to hold onto, knowing even as she did that it was futile. She was going to fall a mile through clear, open air and splat all over the excavation site, and her death would probably puzzle the police for a long time, but that didn't matter because she wouldn't be around to enjoy it.

And then, just when Kate had given up on screaming and was falling with her eyes shut, wishing she'd written a will, something warm and soft wrapped around her and her descent slowed. She didn't open her eyes, though, until her feet touched solid ground, landing as gently as if she'd only dropped a few feet. That was when she let herself peek, half-expecting to find herself wrapped warmly in a cocoon of covers in her bed at the inn, having dreamed the whole ordeal.

She had no such luck.

The cloud of golden sparkles that had caught her unfurled gently, surrounding her for a moment with a spinning halo of shimmering light. Kate hesitated, then put out a hand to brush away the - it looked like sand, but it felt and acted like no sand she'd ever seen before. The instant she touched it, it whirled away, unspooling itself across the sky in massive swoops and swirls, cracking like a whip as it vanished into the clouds. A tiny replica of the White Horse, its two-dimensional body gleefully cantering like a real horse, trotted out of the swirl and danced along Kate's fingers for a second, before rejoining the stream of sparkling sand that disappeared up into the clouds and vanished.

"Miss Marsh?"

Kate jumped, whirling around with a shout. The curator, standing behind her, took a step backwards, obviously alarmed by her behaviour. "What on Earth are you still doing out here? Didn't you see the lightning?"

Kate breathed out. She back over her shoulder, but she was alone in the field. The wolves had vanished back into whatever nightmare they'd sprung from. The sky above her flickered and grumbled, and she could swear that, just for a moment, she heard an echo of distant, wicked laughter.

"Hurry along, get inside before you get yourself killed."The curator turned his back to her again.

A shiver crawled, unbidden, up Kate's spine, and she glanced uneasily up at the sky again. The clouds hid any trace of the battle - if it still went on. If it had been real at all…

Kate shook her head, and turned to follow the curator back out of the storm.


	6. Chapter 6

She wasn't stuck inside long, only about an hour, but it was still long enough that by the time the storm had quieted enough that it was safe to head outside again, her appointment had expired. A group of archaeology students from the university, loud and exuberant, poured into the building, laughing and talking and dispelling the last lingering shreds of Gothic gloom still hanging over the site. Kate spent nearly half an hour arguing with the curator and the lady at the bookings desk trying to set up another visit to the site for sometime during her trip, to no avail. Apparently, the girl in the bed was more popular in death than she could ever have been in life.

Secretly, Kate was slightly relieved; she wasn't exactly eager to venture down into the Saxon girl's grave again, not after what had happened that afternoon. But it still meant that she'd lost her chance to do a more thorough examination of the burial. So it was hardly surprising that she spent most of the bicycle ride back to the bed and breakfast under a thick, dark cloud that had nothing to do with the weather.

It wasn't nearly as warm a ride as the cycle out to the dig had been. Clouds still scudded, dark and ominous, across the sky, blotting out the sun and drawing down an early dark. Kate paused in a patch of trees to the side of an intersection, looking up, but the lightning had stopped, and not even the smallest flicker of light illuminated the grumbling, rolling mass overhead. A gust of wind ruffled her hair, smelling of petrichor and ozone, heavy with the promise of rain.

Kate wished she could stop feeling the itching sensation of eyes on her back. The world seemed darker, the shadows longer, and she was sure it wasn't all due to the heavy clouds. She turned in slow circles as she drained her water bottle, determined not to let anything sneak up behind her. She still wasn't sure what had actually happened that afternoon, but she was very sure that she didn't want to repeat it.

And that was why, when she turned back to the road, she froze in place. From the shadows under the trees across the highway, right in between her and the road she had to take back into town, menacing golden eyes stared back at her.

Kate gripped the bicycle handlebars without taking her eyes from the seemingly disembodied golden ones. She tried to tell herself that it was an ordinary animal, that it would probably be scared off by the bicycle or leave her alone if she got out of its way.

She didn't believe a word of it.

"I'm not scared of you," she said softly, wishing she believed that. The only answer she got was a lupine grin, long and serrated, silver teeth glinting softly in the strained yellow light.

Kate reached around to the outside pocket of her backpack, where she'd stashed the bear spray once it had finally been found. "Let's see how glowing yellow eyes like capsicum, huh?" Not taking her eyes from the ones that watched her, she pulled the spray can free, uncapping it and weighing it in her right hand. With her left, she grabbed the crosspiece of the handlebars, wheeling her bike forward and up onto the verge of the road.

The animal struck as soon as she stepped out of the shadow of the trees. It seemed bigger somehow, with the trees at its back instead of the emptiness of the field. This time, it didn't waste time trying to intimidate her, but broke into a loping run. As soon as it was within striking distance, it leapt, mouth open in a long, silent howl.

Kate sprayed it full in the face with bear spray, not so much as pausing as she ran forward, bicycle rattling over the asphalt. The yellow-eyed creature tried to twist in midair, snapping at her with those dagger-sharp teeth. Kate ducked her head and ran faster.

From behind her, there was a yelp and a meaty thump. Kate didn't stop, and she didn't look back until she reached the trees on the other side of the road. The wolf - dog - thing? was lying on its back on the opposite verge, legs tied together with a band of shimmering gold and a cloud of golden sparkles orbiting its head. Occasionally, the sparkles formed into vague suggestions of running shapes, hares and deer and, disturbingly, some things that looked uncomfortably like toddlers.

Kate dropped the bike. There was no sign of the golden gentleman, but as she looked around, a gust of icy wind set the trees shaking and carried down a voice.

"No sign of him." The trees quieted as the silver-haired boy landed, softly, beside the sleeping creature, his bare feet making no noise against the pavement. Kate was glad to see that he looked no worse for the wear from his strangling on her behalf. He glanced up, and Kate followed his line of sight to the small golden gentleman on his cloud, hovering over the trees above her head. "Is this the last of them?"

The gentleman nodded, descending in a flurry of sparkles. The boy prodded the creature, which looked like nothing so much as an immense black dog now that it was sleeping peacefully and not trying to kill anyone, with the end of his staff. He skipped backwards when it twitched and made a snuffling noise in its sleep.

"What are they, anyway? I thought they were nightmares at first, but they don't freeze like nightmare sand, and - can nightmares even sleep?"

As Kate tried to make heads or tails of this sentence, the gentleman shook his head. He leaned over the black dog's head, and when he straightened up, Kate could see the worry plainly in the way his shoulders slumped, even from her position behind him and obscured by trees.

"You know what they are?"

There was a long, almost stiflingly silent pause. Then the small gentleman shrugged.

The boy sighed, raising both arms over his head in an exaggerated stretch. "All right. Then we'd better go find Pitch and make him sorry he ever crawled back out from under the bed."

The gentleman looked up, and a flurry of sparkling sand coalesced into the shape of a stylized 'G', hovering over his head. The boy frowned, leaning heavily on his staff.

"Remember what happened last time? How he tricked you guys into getting together?"

The small gentleman crossed his arms, and the 'G' dissolved, reforming into first a tooth, then an oddly-spiky horse, then an arrow. Kate couldn't make any sense of the combination, but it obviously meant something to the boy, whose frown suddenly turned guilty.

"Point taken. Okay, we'll go get the guys." He glanced back down at the dog. "I wonder if this is what was making the White Horse so antsy?"

The little gentleman shrugged again. Kate had never before seen anyone shrug quite so expressively. He put his whole body into the motion.

The silver-haired boy shrugged in turn. "Okay, Fido," he said to the unconscious dog, "what do we do with you?"

In answer, the little gentleman grabbed the cord binding the creature's feet and, whirling around, sent it hurtling into the trees. Kate realised a second too late that it was coming directly towards her. Her shriek bounced off of the trees and sent a flock of ravens cawing and wheeling up from the canopy above her head. The black dog crashed to a halt in the bush a little ways behind her, and she slowly uncurled, taking her arms from her head and straightening up.

Both the boy and the gentleman were staring directly into the trees, the boy crouched with his staff held in front of him like a weapon about to fire, the gentleman with his small hands balled into loose fists and an unexpectedly fierce expression.

"I thought you said that was the last of them?" the boy asked, and the gentleman nodded. The boy's frown deepened, and he called out, "Who's there?"


	7. Chapter 7

"Who's there?"

Kate raised both hands, stepping gingerly out from behind the trees. "It's okay, it's just me."

Neither of the other two relaxed. "Who are you? Why are you following us?" the boy demanded.

Kate sputtered. "Why am I - why are you following me? I've had this trip planned for months and you two keep popping up at every stop! Who are you, anyway?"

Apparently, this was not something that either of them was often asked. The boy fumbled his staff, and the little gentleman's mouth dropped open, before the space above his head exploded in a flurry of symbols, changing too quickly for Kate to follow.

"You - you don't know who I am," the boy said, and it sounded less like he was asking a question and more like he was confirming some truth he was resigned to.

"I don't know who either of you are," Kate answered, feeling the first prickles of annoyance. "Why, should I?"

The boy sounded slightly more hopeful when he asked, "But you can still see us?"

"Shouldn't I be able to?" Kate glanced over to the little gentleman, but got no help from that quarter.

"Well, not if you don't believe. And, no offense, but you're, uh, a little old to -"

"I'm only twenty-one!" Kate snapped. "And believe in what?"

The gigantic golden arrow pointing towards the two was, in Kate's opinion, slightly over the top.

"In you?" Kate shook her head. "So you're...what? Myths? Legends?" Her mind flickered back to the smithy, and the man with the forge on his back.

"Something like that." The boy shifted his grip on his staff, leaning the butt end against the ground. It looked significantly less threatening, but the way he held it made Kate somehow very sure that he'd be able to turn it from a walking-stick into a weapon again at a moment's notice. "I think technically we're spirits, but there's a whole collection of stories about Sandy, and he's got nothing on some of the others -"

"Wait, wait," Kate interrupted, puzzle pieces slotting into place in her brain. Shimmering, malleable golden sand, sending people to sleep... "Sandy? As in the Sandman?"

The little gentleman ceased his wordless diatribe, his thunderous expression clearing as the sand over his head swirled into a giant check mark. He flashed a huge, gap-toothed smile at Kate, who couldn't help but return it.

The boy, she guessed, probably didn't realise how much like a lost puppy he looked right now. "So that means you're..." Kate flicked through everything she knew about him, but nothing seemed to come together. She was about to go out on a limb and guess Peter Pan, even though she knew that it must be wrong, when her brain flickered back to the day when all of this strangeness had started. The wind in her hair, the sound of his voice shouting from up the hill, and her waterbottle frozen solid and covered in a fine lace of -

"Frost?" The smile she got was almost painfully happy, and Kate knew she'd got it right. "You're Jack Frost. Okay, this is the weirdest day of my life."

"That is never going to get old," the boy - Jack Frost! - said softly, and Kate got the strong impression that he wasn't talking to either her or the small gentlem- the Sandman.

"So that would make the creep you guys saved me from this afternoon - and seriously, thank you so much for that -"

Both of the spirits' smiles vanished. "_Pitch Black_," Jack practically snarled, and Kate made a mental note that this was a sore spot. "The Boogeyman. Last time we saw him, he was trying to snuff out belief in the Guardians - the good spirits that kind of watch over kids - and cover the world in darkness. We had to put him down around Easter."

Kate took a moment to absorb this. "I'm guessing that him being out and about is a bad thing, then."

The Sandman nodded furiously, and his sand symbols turned jagged and angry.

"Not just a bad thing," Jack said, and even though his tone was even, his face clearly gave his thoughts away. "He shouldn't even be strong enough to be aboveground this soon. And it's a little weird - last time we saw him, he was being dragged down into his lair by his own nightmares." Kate didn't miss the way his grip on his staff shifted. "Under a bed. In Pennsylvania. So it's a little bit strange that he turned up here. In England. In a pit. And it's even stranger that you, the only adult I've ever met who can see us, and who's been everywhere we've gone for the past two days, was right there."

Kate's face suddenly felt strangely hot. "It wasn't my fault, if that's what you're implying. Or if it was, I didn't do it on purpose." She didn't miss the look Jack shared with the Sandman, who seemed almost as baffled as she was. "Hey, I don't know what's going on! I just came to spend a week of my vacation looking at -" She stopped, as an idea hit her at the speed of slow. "Of course. Burial sites!"

The suspicious look Jack was giving her suddenly turned confused, and above the Sandman's head, a small clock formed, a door opening just below its face to let a bird pop out, its beak opening in a silent cuckoo. Kate hardly noticed, caught up in her own discovery. "Do you know what that pit was?"

"A...hole in the ground?"

"It's an excavated bed burial. Which means that there's a bed in the bottom of the pit - or what's left of one." Kate shook her head. " 'Under the bed'. It's so obvious! Ugh, I can't believe I didn't think of that sooner."

"Wait. There was a bed in that hole?"

"Well, more like the decayed remains of a bed frame that's almost a thousand years old. But yeah, if that counts."

"I guess that answers that question." Jack swung his staff up and over his shoulders, hooking both arms around it, and Kate found herself wondering if he ever stood still for more than five minutes at a time. "Sounds pretty much like that other entrance, wouldn't you say, Sandy?"

The Sandman's elaborate shrug contrived to suggest that Jack would know better than he would.

"So what was that thing that attacked me? That...dog-looking thing," Kate elaborated, when both of the others looked slightly lost. "Was that supposed to be the Big Bad Wolf or something?"

The Sandman shook his head emphatically, sending a fine layer of golden sand flying. Jack looked as if he'd swallowed a lemon when he admitted, "I don't think we really know what they are." His smile was almost blindingly white when it returned, with a cocky slant to it. "But we're going to figure it out, and take care of it...whatever it is."

"Well, that's reassuring." Kate smiled, hoping she didn't sound too sarcastic. She didn't mean to, really, but it had been a long and thoroughly surreal day. "Thank you, again, for saving my butt - twice."

Jack made a sweeping bow, a little sarcastic, and the Sandman bobbed his head graciously. "Hey, it's what we do."

"I was under the impression that what you did was paint on windows."

"That too. And make snow days. And protect the children of the world." Jack shrugged nonchalantly.

"I'm not exactly a child."

The grim look that crossed Jack's face looked very out of place there. "This stopped being about just you the minute Pitch got involved."

The Sandman nodded, and then raised a hand in a gesture that Kate recognized as one of sudden realization. The puff of sand that formed itself into a slowly-rotating stylized 'G' caught Jack's attention, and a sheepish grin settled over his face. "Speaking of which. We've got to go call in reinforcements." His nose wrinkled, and he muttered, "I still say we could handle this -"

He cut off abruptly when the Sandman folded his arms across his chest and glared. "Anyway. Reinforcements." Jack waved his staff, and a chill wind wrapped around Kate, lifting Jack clean off the pavement. "Think you can make it to wherever you were going, or do you want a lift?"

"I've got my bike," Kate answered, remembering that the cycle in question was currently lying forgotten in the grass on the verge. "I'll be fine." And, she thought, it might be a good idea to not fly into the middle of Cambridge, accompanied by two mythical figures. _Myths_. People who, in a more orderly universe, should_ not_ exist outside of cheesy songs.

An enormous exclamation mark swirled into existence over the Sandman's head, followed by a disembodied Cheshire-cat grin that seemed to have too many teeth in it. Kate's confusion must have shown on her face, because the little gentleman huffed exasperatedly and produced a pair of giant eyeballs, which floated around behind her, blinking at the back of her head when she tried to turn and face them.

Kate laughed. "Okay, I'll watch my back. But I thought you said that was the last of those monsters?"

"_Those _monsters, yeah." Jack shifted, bobbing up and down in midair. "But we don't know if there're more where they came from."

The Sandman nodded, anxiously pointing to a beaky silhouette that the sand had formed over his head. "And Pitch is out there somewhere," Jack agreed. "Just be careful, okay?"

Kate nodded, wondering as she did so what she could possibly do if some kind of supernatural monster decided to attack her between here and Cambridge. The bear spray seemed to have had little effect. She made a mental note to take the first opportunity to get some salt, and maybe something iron. They were both supposed to be proof against ghosts and fairies, weren't they?

As she picked up her bicycle and waved her goodbyes, she had to wonder just what she'd gotten herself into. Myths and monsters? Talking to people who shouldn't exist? Nearly being _eaten_ by things that shouldn't – couldn't – be real? She was out of her depth, and couldn't be sure that she hadn't completely lost touch with reality.

And yet, she couldn't wipe the smile off her face for the whole ride back into town.


End file.
